


sunsets and silhouette dreams

by touchingashton



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Lashton - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:18:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchingashton/pseuds/touchingashton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ashton Irwin - twenty-two year old wanna-be writer looking for inspiration. Every day he sits in the empty corner of the coffee shop and studies every person that enters through the doors. Luke Hemmings - twenty year old photographer wandering through the city. He keeps returning to the coffee shop, and he isn't sure why. Or maybe he is; maybe it's the cute curly-haired mess that sits in the corner staring at his laptop screen everyday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ashton had always dreamed of the city lights. He remembered sitting down with his best friend, Nick, talking about the future. "I hate this place," the small thirteen-year-old version of him had said. "All you ever see are boring people with boring routines and you only ever hear about other people's business. I hate it."   
  
"Why don't you leave then?" his friend had questioned. They sat on two separate red beanbags in Nick's room watching some boring movie Nick had picked. Ashton looked at him incredulously.   
  
"How the hell am I supposed to get out of here? I'm only thirteen, Nick." They stayed silent for a few minutes. "God, I just wish I could leave."   
  
"Where do you plan on going, Ash?" Nick looked at him with curious eyes. "Most places in Australia are the same - my family have traveled all over. Where do you plan on escaping?"   
  
Ashton's eyes glistened with excitement as he thought of all the possibilities the future could hold. "I want to move to New York City," he said. "I want to see the city lights and hear the loud traffic at night. That's where I want to pursue my career, Nick. That's where I want figure my life out and be happy."   
  
Ashton spent every day after that planning out his future. How old he would be when he moved, what he would do. He was twenty-one when he moved away from his home where everything he ever loved was in Australia and moved to America's city of lights.   
  
So he sat, every day, in the exact same spot at the exact same time with his expensive laptop open and his black glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose. He sat and he waiting for something, anything, to cross his mind so his thoughts could fill the empty space on the pages and create something beautiful.   
  
He sat and he observed each and every individual that entered the quiet cafe. Blonde hair, fair skin, sad green eyes. Must have gotten some terrible news, Ashton decided. Short brown hair, brown eyes and a bright smile. That guy must have been having a good day.  
  
Ashton pushed up the brim of his glasses up his nose (an old habit of his) and ran his hand through his dark messy hair. He sighed in frustration and called for a waitress. He ordered a coffee to keep him awake - he had been staying up late lately writing and deleting new ideas for a new (and hopefully successful) novel. Only when his computer went to sleep, causing the screen to turn black, did he really notice just how disheveled he looked. In his reflection, he saw his messy hair and the dark bags that lined his bright eyes. He noticed just how pale his skin was and sighed at his own laziness. He hadn't bothered to fix himself up this morning.   
  
Ashton was a dreamer. That was what separated him from the crowd. He would watch the people around him go about their boring daily routines and would take notice of how bored and unsatisfied they looked with their lives. He had long ago promised himself that he would never become one of them and he aspired to make something of his life. He craved adventure.   
  
That's what this new life was for. He was here to explore and discover new things; to start a family and to find love. To find his happily ever after. In another life, maybe the daily routine and perfect life his parents had always planned for him would have sufficed, but this was here and this was now. This was him and that was okay.   
  
Ashton tugged on his hair in frustration as his mind went blank. He had given himself a time limit of seven months to write this novel and had already wasted three. He had to get to work now or his dreams may just come crashing down.   
  
The hardest part about writing for Ashton was getting the perfect characters. He didn't like his characters to be ordinary and liked striving for something different. He didn't like his characters to all the the stereotypical lovers or be absolutely perfect. In fact, he despised those characters.   
  
He lifted his head and looked for inspiration around the room. His eyes scanned the busy coffee shop from the far (and mostly ignored) corner of the room. Only then did he realise that an extremely attractive blonde had locked eyes with him.   
  
He stared - he didn't mean to, he just couldn't seem to tear his eyes away - at the boy and softly gasped. Why was he looking at Ashton like that? Was there something on his face?   
  
He looked back into the reflection of his laptop and frowned when he saw that his face was exactly as it was the last time he looked - perfectly normal aside from the paleness of his face and the heavy bags under his usually bright eyes.   
  
When he looked back up he noticed the boy now standing with a drink in hand. Ashton was completely unaware that there was somebody else seated with the stranger until they had snapped his fingers in front of the stranger's face to regain their attention. Ashton's mind raced with unanswerable questions.  _Why was he looking at him like that? What did he want?_  
  
Hours passed and eventually the boy had left the cafe with his friend (whom was a female) and once again, Ashton was left alone, going by unnoticed, and wasting away the hours sitting and staring in disbelief rather than pouring his heart out onto the open word document.   
  
When the sun went down and the room began to empty, he packed up his things and made his way out into the cold streets of New York. He stood patiently in the cold weather as he tried to haul a taxi, but of course did not succeed. He stood as the rain began to pour and as each passing car would splash a puddle that would land directly on him. It was frustrating, of course, but Ashton had grown accustomed to it.   
  
Once he made it back to his small apartment, it felt as if he could finally breathe. He lived alone so he could enjoy the peace and quiet of his surroundings.   
  
There was a soft padding on the floor that made Ashton lean down and smile. "Hey there, bud," he whispered to his ginger cat as he rubbed behind its ear. A soft smile lit up his face. He pulled out his laptop and began writing down the events of the day, thinking he could use them as inspiration for a story, beginning with those deep blue eyes that hadn't left his mind since earlier in the coffee shop. 


	2. chapter two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> really sorry about this being like 5 months overdue

The day began just like any other day. Ashton woke up, brushed his teeth, and went to the coffee shop. (He just wasn’t one to bother fixing himself up. What reason did he have?) He ordered a coffee, and demanded a refill exactly thirty-seven minutes later because he could feel his eyelids drooping.

 

In the four hours he was sat in that one corner at that one coffee shop, he only managed to write three sentences.

 

_The hushed conversations and the loud buzzing of coffee machines were what calmed Ashton. There was something about the curiosity of what people were thinking and saying and the natural sound of busy workers that just helped him unwind. He wasn’t sure why; it just did._

He wasn’t too sure where he was headed with it just yet. Is it lame to write yourself into stories? Oh, well.

 

On the sixteenth minute of the fifth hour he had sat there, staring blankly at his computer screen, he looked up. The sight in front of him wasn’t exactly a surprise—it’s exactly what he was hoping to find. It isn’t the person or the scene in front of him that knocked the breath out of him, but the fact  that the person whom had captured his attention was already looking his way.

 

The blue-eyed mystery boy sat hand-in-hand with a young brown-haired girl across the room. His blonde hair was done perfectly into a quiff and he wore tight black jeans and an open jacket over an _All Time Low_ t-shirt. Ashton thought he had great music taste all ready.

 

Although the air was still chilly through the heat the heater produced, Ashton felt his cheeks and ears burn red. He looked back down at his computer screen and didn’t dare look back up for another ten minutes. He was disappointed with the sight he was faced with—the boy kissing the pretty girl on the cheek and them walking out, hands interlocked.

 

He wanted to know the boy’s name. He wanted to know what made him tick and what made him smile. His favourite bands and his deepest secrets. Ashton wanted to know him inside and out, back to front; to know every inch of his body. It was strange, this feeling. He had not felt it in a long time and quite frankly, it frightened him. If locking eyes with a cute boy could do this to him, he wondered what actual words and actions might do.

 

\--

 

_Ashton had dreamt of this moment since that long day exactly three weeks ago. He had been dreaming of the day that his infatuation for one particularly handsome boy would develop into something a little more and give him the courage to finally introduce himself. He pondered over what to say and how he would approach him. Would it frighten him if he just walked up to the boy and told him his name? He thought maybe it would._

_Although he promised himself that today would be the day, it didn’t feel right. He didn’t feel right. He couldn’t do it. That was it. Ashton Irwin was a chicken. He could barely talk to his own mother without stuttering and fumbling over his words; how on earth was he supposed to talk to the cute boy driving him insane every second of every day?_

_Luckily for Ashton, he didn’t have to. Blue-eyes made the first move. It seemed as if the universe was on his side today._

\--

 

Ashton knew it was nerdy and stupid to write out his fantasy of the boy making the first move and living happily ever after, but it was all he had.

 

He was tired. Tired of having nothing to write about; tired of all the god damn homework he got from his creative writing course at NYU; tired of being alone.

 

It was getting dark and Ashton felt the sudden need to get lost in somebody else’s fantasy world. He packed up his stuff and sighed in frustration as he knew that he was never going to finish his novel in time.

 

As he walked in the pouring rain that night, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. “Hello?” he answered without looking at the caller ID.

 

“Ashton!” a familiar voice sounded.

 

“Nick! Shit, man,” he muttered as he walked. He slapped his forehead in the sudden realisation that he hadn’t spoken to his friend in almost two weeks.

 

“Where’ve you been, dude?” Ashton listened carefully to the way his best friend’s words slurred together and the pounding bass in the background and instantly knew that Nick had been out all night partying and was drunk. Alcohol and Nick never mixed well.

 

“Just…here…” Ashton replied awkwardly has he fished his apartment keys out of his pocket. “New York hasn’t been very eventful lately, but I bet Australia has. Any news?”

 

Nick cackled into the speaker. “Have you spoken to the boys?”

 

“No.”

 

“You need to. Caleb took Taylor’s girlfriend and now there’s a whole load of _shit._ ”

 

“Sounds…interesting,” Ashton said. He could not be bothered keeping up the conversation any longer than necessary and prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that Nick would get the message and leave him alone.

 

The line went silent for a while. “Nick?” He hummed in response. “I’m gonna go. It’s late here. Don’t party too hard.” And with that, he hung up and lied in his bed, curling into a ball and wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to keep warm in the cold winter night. Ashton didn’t like being alone any more.

 

 

 

Luke wasn’t sure what it was exactly that brought him to New York City. Maybe it was the city lights and the endless possibilities, or maybe it was the people that fascinated him. Or it could have something to do with his best friend basically dragging him along the way.

 

“What the hell am I supposed to do here, Calum?” he tried to reason. Luke had never been able to say no to Calum’s big pleading eyes. Why? He didn’t know. And as much as Luke was questioning his big move from Australia to halfway across the world, he knew it was for the best.

 

“I don’t know,” Calum said. “Be here with me while I explore what’s really out there? Explore with me, Luke. We’ve been stuck in that place for years but there’s so much more. Chase your dreams or something. Find love.”

 

Luke sent him a look and Calum smiled at him in return. “I know, I know. I swear I’m not gay.”

 

The two boys laughed at that and continued to find their way through the busy streets of the most beautiful city they had seen. Sure, they’d seen lights and they’d seen dreams come true. Hell, they’d seen people get mugged and caught cabs themselves. But what fascinated them the most wasn’t the lights or the crowd, nor was it the cars or the tall buildings. For Luke and Calum, it was the people that surrounded them that captivated them.

 

Luke wasn’t quite sure what he was to do here in this big city, but he knew it was where he belonged. 


End file.
